I’m trying to decide whether I should take my allotment or pass. I have not ever drank or tasted Reynvaan wines. I do have two cases waiting to be shipped from previous orders, but again, I have no personal experience drinking these wines. I get Cayuse wines and do enjoy most that I’ve tried (I have many I have not tried as well). I think that’s why I got on the Reynvaan list. I do not recall what inspired me to get on the list…
If anyone has tasted these wines and would like to offer a brief description, that would be most helpful. I rarely pay attention to the “wine maker’s” notes. The 2020 futures are for a 100% merlot and a Bordeaux blend.
I was in your situation (smaller bottle count) a while back, and I decided I wasn’t interested in waiting years to get a bottle while shelling out more money for futures of wines I had never tasted.
Honestly if they had offered me some kind of intro Syrah that I could taste earlier I might have stuck it out, but the delays plus the high pricing had me drop before I ever tasted a bottle I had already bought.
Curious on pricing. Are you saving that much compared to buying it from various wine shops? Cayuse for $85 is usually available at around $115ish or a bit more. Of course Bionic Frog is the huge exception.
I’ve tried lots of Reynvaan going back to 07. The syrahs are outstanding and are stylistically very similar to Cayuse. In a handful of vintages, I think Reynvaan exceeded Cayuse (non-frog) but that is generally not the case. I can’t help you with the Bordeaux variety wines however since that’s just not my thing and thus haven’t had Reynvaans in that genre. Cheers.
Maybe I’m not waiting long enough, but I have yet to experience a great Reynvaan wine. I bought a lot of 13s and 14s because they were available and I could only get
6 bottles of Cayuse per year. Every time I open a bottle I am disappointed. Just a couple of weeks ago, I opened a 13 Stonessence. Initially the funk was overwhelming. It
was still dominant a day later. On the second day, the funk was tamed, but the wine was flat. It went down the sink. To be fair, I have had similar experiences with Cayuse of a similar age. I think you need to be prepared to hold them >10 years.
I can attest to this about Cayuse, at least for my palate. Rarely (though it has happened) I tend to like them less in the first 5-10 years after bottling. Sometimes the funk is too overpowering; sometime they are very brash with little subtlety. I have much more limited experience with Reynvaan, but to the extent they are similar styles of wine it would make sense to me to want to wait. I think I have 2013 Stonessence in fact, and I am waiting a while before I open it!
Thanks for the responses. This particular offer is for their “Classic” (red blend) and their 100% Merlot. Both $85 per bottle. I do not shop for wine, generally, and only buy through each producer’s offerings. I had no idea one could find these wines for less than you can from the winery.
I do like Merlot from Washington state, so I may just buy 3 of them.
Yes there is a funny market dynamic (and I don’t mean funny in the sense that it does not have a market rationale) that some (though I don’t think all) Reynvaan wines can be found at retail at a lower price than from the winery. By contrast that has not been the case with most (I think all) Cayuse wines. I think that is unfortunate as it may indicate the wines (i.e. Reynvaan) are not very good – but generally they are quite good (though I admittedly have had limited exposure to them). All of this is to say that if you are undecided and do not purchase, you might be able to later, and perhaps at a lower price.
I’ve had a lot of Reynvaan. I love the Syrahs. Stonessence is probably the most similar to Cayuse (more funk than it’s other bottlings). I tend to prefer In the Rocks and In the Hills which both have more of the Cote Rotie style which gives it a nice aromatic and acidic lift that many wines from The Rocks benefit from.
As far as the BDX varietals the OP is asking about, I got the first 2 vintages of the cab and haven’t repurchased. Personal preference but I like the funk profile more in Syrah than cab and I have a different expectation when drinking cab.
My feelings in general about the rocks is I’ve liked Syrah from there much more than Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon or Tempranillo. Gramercy has done an interesting Cab franc too but I still prefer the Syrah.
Interesting comment by markchurchill. I have the same feeling about the Cayuse syrahs versus bdx blends (with some exceptions). That is, I think the Rocks funk works really well with syrah; less so with other grapes. I would be hard pressed to identify some of the Cayuse bdx blends as coming from bdx grapes. So like mark, I look for something different in Cabs and Merlot. Having said that some people love the Cayuse bdx blends.
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